Gröninger Fass, Historic giant wine barrel at Jagdschloss Spiegelsberge, Halberstadt, Germany.
The Gröninger Fass, also called the Halberstadt Giant Wine Barrel, is a late-16th-century barrel kept in the cellar of Jagdschloss Spiegelsberge. Measured in 2005, it holds 140,000 to 145,000 litres, is 7.56 m long inside and 8.33 to 8.48 m outside, with an inner stave-edge diameter of 4.37 m. It is built of 92 oak staves, possibly 93 originally.
Heinrich Julius (1564–1613), Duke of Brunswick and administrator of the Halberstadt bishopric, ordered the barrel for Gröningen Palace; cooper Michael Werner of Landau, who three years earlier had built the first Heidelberg barrel, finished it in 1594. The work cost 6,000 thalers, not counting the wood. When Gröningen Palace was sold and demolished in the late 18th century, Baron Ernst Ludwig Christoph von Spiegel had the barrel brought to Halberstadt and set up in the cellar of the Jagdschloss.
The barrel was a prestige object of the Renaissance and Baroque, not a working wine vessel. It was ordered by Heinrich Julius, Duke of Brunswick and administrator of the Halberstadt bishopric, and finished in 1594 at a cost of 6,000 thalers, wood excluded. Its cooper, Michael Werner of Landau, had built the first Heidelberg barrel three years earlier.
The barrel stands in the cellar of Jagdschloss Spiegelsberge, reached by stairs into a cool vaulted space; the interior length of 7.56 m and the 4.37 m stave diameter are best judged from the far end of the room. The 2005 survey figures give a capacity of 140,000 to 145,000 litres, so allow time to walk around the whole vessel.
The Guinness Book of Records listed it as the world's oldest giant wine barrel on 6 June 2008, but corrected the entry in 2019 after the Tübingen giant barrel was shown to have been built in 1549. The Gröningen barrel itself was completed in 1594.
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